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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26273899">9 Years of Radio Silence</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxyofstarks/pseuds/galaxyofstarks'>galaxyofstarks</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aaron Echolls really fucked up his life, Canon Compliant, F/M, How is he accused of murder again, I never know what to tag my works, Logan is a Mess, Logan wants to call Veronica, Logan's POV, TW: Past Abuse, Veronica and Logan are meant to be, but of course he keeps hesitating, these tags are a mess i'm sorry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:35:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,784</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26273899</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxyofstarks/pseuds/galaxyofstarks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Carrie Bishop has been found dead in her bathtub and Logan Echolls doesn't quite know what to do when he is accused of killing her... There is a certain someone he would very much like to call, but he can't quite bring himself to do it.<br/>(Canon compliant!)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Carrie Bishop/Logan Echolls, Logan Echolls/Veronica Mars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>9 Years of Radio Silence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The story takes place right as the movie starts, so it contains spoilers for the first three seasons. This is my first venture in the Veronica Mars universe (that I've deemed acceptable enough to post), so I hope I got the characters right.<br/>This story contains light occasional swearing, dark humour, references to past canon abuse, to alcohol and drug use, and references to canon character deaths. If any of those things trigger you or make you uncomfortable, you should probably not read any further. I hope I don't offend anyone with the dark humour or these topics - it's certainly not my intention!<br/>Thank you for clicking and I hope you enjoy this story!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So, Logan Echolls was accused of murder. Again. The murder of his ex-girlfriend. Again. He would probably laugh at how ridiculous it all was if he wasn’t mourning an ex-girlfriend he wished he’d been there to save in time. Again.</p><p>There was some change to the scenario, though. This time, he’d found the body. This time, he’d immediately been the prime suspect, and not an afterthought. This time, it was front page news. And this time, he was an adult, not a minor, and a Navy officer whose career looked like it would be heading down the drain pretty soon if the “investigation” kept going that way, not a cocky high schooler. So, really, this was thrilling. Exciting. A blown-up version of the disaster that had been the Lilly Kane murder case. The Lilly Kane murder case on steroids, maybe. For the tabloids, at least, and more honest news sources than he cared to admit. This, the sensational pop star Bonnie DeVille’s murder, that was big news. A big scandal. A Hollywood love story gone awry. And the public adored it.</p><p>Never mind that Carrie Bishop was the one who had been killed. A broken shell of a girl, haunted by demons Logan couldn’t understand, even if he’d tried repeatedly. A young girl who felt the weight of the world on her shoulders. A woman who cheated on Logan, pushed him away and lied to him. The sad residue of a girl he’d loved. So fragile in death, in her bathtub, Logan had seen Carrie. Not peaceful like they would have you believe all the deceased are, but somewhat back a few steps from the spiraling downwards staircase she’d rushed through during the last few years of her life. In that moment, she was the Carrie he loved, not the confessional songwriter and dramatic star the public had gotten to know. She wasn’t Bonnie DeVille. Or at least, not in Logan’s eyes for the few seconds he’d seen her before waking up to one of the sheriff’s deputies’ meaningless words.</p><p>He wished they focused on investigating Carrie Bishop’s murder instead of feeding the drama of Bonnie DeVille’s tragic passing. He knew Carrie was slipping away more and more in the last months, so there wasn’t much left of her to kill. But whatever parts of her were left in between the cocaine and alcohol were worth a hell of a lot more than Bonnie DeVille’s entire persona. And yet the sheriff and the public were clinging to him as the suspected killer of a beloved popstar instead of the broken ex-boyfriend slash caretaker of a lost woman.</p><p>Everyone thought he was guilty. It was everywhere, he knew. He didn’t even have to step outside to have it bombarded at him. Complete strangers believed he had electrocuted their favourite singer. Yet those same strangers had been outraged at the idea that Aaron Echolls could have committed a murder, even with the testimonies of his victim’s best friend and his own son. Aaron Echolls was a star, a movie star, the 1987 sexiest man alive! Sexiest men alive didn’t commit murders. Not in the eyes of the public, anyway. But sons of sexiest men alive… well, they were simply predisposed to kill their drug addict pop star girlfriends.</p><p>Logan shook his head as he felt a tear fall down his cheek. He was nursing what was probably his fifth whiskey. Or sixth. Maybe seventh? He’d say he’d lost count, but he hadn’t even bothered starting the count at any point. He wanted to throw the empty glass sitting in his hand. Throw it on the floor and watch it shatter, tiny pieces everywhere, ready to wound him any time he dared move. But he didn’t because he didn’t do that anymore. This new Logan thought before he acted. The new Logan didn’t react violently to upsetting situations. The new Logan took deep breaths and settled the glass down. Then again, the new Logan shouldn’t have reverted to his old tendencies of drinking to forget, so the therapy had lost its bet, that night. Still, Logan didn’t throw the glass on the floor. He slammed it on the counter with more force than necessary, but he didn’t break it. He didn’t clean it, either, because he had self control, but not <em>that</em> much self control.</p><p>So, accused of murder. Coming back to that. That could be a problem. Even if he knew for a fact he wasn’t a murderer (something he’d repeatedly told all kinds of cops in his teen years, but it seemed that if they’d believed him then, they’d forgotten), he was still currently very likely to be convicted. And while living in California had a number of advantages, right then its death penalty seemed a good enough reason to have moved out years ago. Logan knew they hadn’t executed someone in a while (since 2006, he’d checked), but it was still a definite possibility. Especially since the whole country was convinced he’d killed their favourite pop star and hated his guts, and the sheriff seemed to base all his decisions on public opinion over actual evidence (not that the evidence was in his favour much, but still).</p><p>The death penalty… Logan caught himself wondering if maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. His mom was dead, and she was alone up there with his dad. Maybe if he joined her she’d have a good time there. He had never been sure if he believed in life after death, but when one was faced with not only the possibility but the probability of an execution, one broadened his ideas on the great beyond. A coping mechanism, perhaps. Another one. And even if the public (who <em>was</em> the public? Who were those faceless goons who believed he was a killer?) was wrong about him being Carrie’s murderer, there was no telling they wouldn’t eventually be right about him being <em>a</em> murderer. He knew it was somewhere in his genes. He knew Aaron had been beaten by his father before turning around and doing the same to his son. (Logan winced at a particularly vivid memory of the snap of a belt.) And he wanted to believe he was better. But if he looked at it logically (or at least what the booze was telling him was logical), there had been a definite worsening across generations. Sure, his grandfather used to beat his wife and son. You’d think it doesn’t get much worse than that. But Aaron, the beaten son, had not only also endeavoured to beat his wife and son (family traditions!), but slept with his son’s underage girlfriend and killed her. So. Logan didn’t quite know what to add to all that (maybe a terrorist attack?) to make his own passage on Earth more monstrous than his father’s, but he didn’t really want to find out. He hadn’t lashed out yet. This could be seen as a good sign, but then again he had no wife or son, and definitely no son’s girlfriend to date and kill, so really who knew. Maybe letting himself be convicted would stop it all before it happened. Let the Echolls violence die out with him. Or at the very least, let the Echolls violence be incarcerated for life.</p><p>That would also mean Carrie’s real killer would never be found, which created a slight problem. But who would even care enough to find out? The sheriff’s department had clearly indicated they didn’t give a flying fuck as long as they caught someone, and they had. Suddenly the nagging voice that he’d managed to keep at the back of his mind the whole night (the whole time since Carrie’s death, really) was edging dangerously close to the forefront. So, so dangerously. He closed his eyes, pushing his fists to his eyelids. As if forcing the letters to disappear from his mind.</p><p><em>Veronica</em>.</p><p>Shit. Veronica would care. Veronica would sleuth, ask around, poke around, ruffle feathers, take names and kick ass to find the truth. No. Teenage Veronica would, Veronica from 10 years ago. He heard she was in New York now. Doing what, he didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.</p><p>That was a lie. He wanted to know. He wanted to know very, very badly. But it wasn’t his place. She’d told him 9 years previously that she wanted him out of her life, and he had obliged. He hadn’t even hired someone to make sure she was okay. (That had not ended well the last time he had tried.) He’d stayed out of her way, he had dropped out of Hearst. And he’d hit rock bottom without her. But he’d also pushed back and gotten up without her. He had managed. He never thought, before, that he’d end up so well – a Navy pilot! – once she’d gone away, but he had. In spite of her, even.</p><p>Would she be mad if he broke his silent promise? If he called, asking for a favour he didn’t really had any right asking? Would she pick up? She probably wouldn’t know it was him, after all these years, calling. His number had changed. When she picked up, would she hang up at the sound of his voice? Would she tell him to get out of it himself? Would she believe he had killed Carrie?</p><p>No, no, no. Veronica wouldn’t believe he was guilty. Right? His mind flashed back to years previously, being interrogated by sheriff Lamb (the old one, the one who worked out). Calling Veronica. She’d said she would get him out of there. But then he’d found out she was the one who had presented the evidence to the sheriff, getting him there in the first place. And they were <em>dating</em> at the time. What would it be after 9 years without a single contact?</p><p>Was it even within his rights to be thinking of Veronica at the moment? His most recent ex-girlfriend had just been <em>murdered</em> and he was contemplating a phone call to another ex. It felt tacky, cheap. Yet he couldn’t stop thinking of Veronica, and he had to admit to himself that it had been that way since he’d been read his rights and handcuffed.</p><p>They were both adults, they had moved on and had new lives now. Surely she wouldn’t be mad at him for contacting her, even after the explosive fallout of the last few days of freshman year of college. But then again, it was Veronica Mars and he had never met someone who could hold a grudge quite like her. Veronica Mars was a fierce woman, excellent investigator and not someone who changed her mind very easily, if at all. Logan weighted his options and their possible outcomes and came to the conclusion that there was a good 50% chance she would send him packing and/or ignore him completely.</p><p>First there was the issue that he still had her number after all those years. Even if he <em>hadn’t</em> been stalking her or keeping tabs on her, he still had kept her number in his contacts and updating it when she changed. He firmly believed that periodically asking Mac if Veronica’s number had changed didn’t count as stalking. Or at least, he firmly believed that he wanted to believe it was not stalking. Everything had an extra layer of complication when it came to Veronica. Would she find it creepy he still had her number? Would she agree with him it wasn’t stalker behaviour at all? Something inside of him told him she would not make a big deal out of this, because if anyone in that relationship had stalker tendencies, it was Veronica. Not that they were in any kind of relationship anymore nor had he any right to refer to the two of them as a relationship. Ugh.</p><p>Logan contemplated the very clear possibility of a Veronica Mars rejection. Veronica Mars rejections were the worst kind of rejection. They left him shattered and broken every single time. Hell, she’d broken up with him three times and the mildest reaction he’d had to that was the second time, when he broke her living room lamp, was tackled to the wall by her dad and been told to never set foot in the apartment again. No, Veronica Mars rejections were not something he liked stomaching. So when he brought up the idea to Dick the next morning, he had the most reasonable reaction a friend could have.</p><p>“Dude, are you crazy?” he replied, a wide eyed look aimed at Logan between two gulps of beer.</p><p>Dick had never been the most eloquent of his friends. Then again, he got his point across fairly well without the eloquence.</p><p>“She’s gonna stomp on your heart again,” Dick continued. “I though Ronnie was out of your head. C’mon, don’t bring her into this.”</p><p>And Dick was right. He’d been there during the aftermath of each of his breakups with Veronica, picking up the pieces as well as he could. The last one, especially, had been complete chaos. Logan was a mess, and Dick had not-so-gently gotten him through it. He’d also been there when Veronica transferred to Stanford and Logan completely lost control. Then again, Dick didn’t quite have control over anything at that time either, so it was more of a pathetic solidarity. Still, Dick had seen what being rejected by Veronica Mars did to Logan, and he wanted to make sure his friend didn’t get hurt again. It was sweet, in a Dick way.</p><p>But, Logan rationalized, maybe his extended experience in Veronica Mars rejections (he was starting to really like the phrase) gave him preparation, a better idea of what was to come. No one in the world was as prepared as him to be turned down and left behind by Veronica Mars, no one had been on the receiving end as often. (Although, maybe some Stanford or Columbia guys had managed to reach his record. But they probably didn’t have the emotional all-in Logan had had every time with Veronica, so they didn’t have the devastating effects quite as ingrained into them.) One could say Logan had spent his teen years developing immunity. And what use was immunity if one didn’t put it to use? Say, in a phone call.</p><p>Phone calls were safe. In phone calls, your interlocutor didn’t see your trembling lip, your quivering fingers, your desperate eyes or the embarrassing lack of shaving. And he could always leave a message if she didn’t pick up. Deep down, though, he knew he wouldn’t say anything to her answering machine. The last time he’d done that (god, had it really been 9 years?), he had been left positively destroyed. And it was so easy to start babbling and forget the important points when there was no interlocutor to keep him in check. It was so easy to ignore a voicemail and delete it, and the caller would never know.</p><p>And what if she picked up? What if she picked up and had no idea what the hell he was talking about? Maybe those news hadn’t reached New York. Maybe this was still a California hot scoop, nothing national. But then that night Bonnie DeVille’s death was the first big title of the evening news and the cover story of the magazine Dick brought home, so that small doubt quickly disappeared from his mind. Seeing his face printed in glossy ink beside the word “murderer?” in big fat yellow letters made him sure that the news had somehow reached her.</p><p>All he had to decide now was whether to call her.</p><p>It was a decision he’d considered a number of times over the years, too many to count. The first few months alone, he’d considered it nearly every day, sometimes several times a day. It was somewhat of a miracle he hadn’t drunkenly called her one time or another, seeing how often he had gotten too drunk to remember his own name that summer. He hadn’t gotten properly drunk in years, and while the idea that his thoughts and feelings and pain never became hazy around the corners, numbed by the alcohol, would have horrified a teenage Logan, the adult version was at peace with it. Still, even in his sober state, it had occurred to him many times to pick up his phone, click on her name on the screen and press “call”. Every year on her birthday, for instance.</p><p>He didn’t have a clear memory of her 20<sup>th</sup> birthday – he’d been completely out of it most of the day, drinking straight out of the bottle directly after getting out of the bed and realizing what day it was. He was pretty sure he’d wanted to call her, though, because he wanted to call her every second of every day at that time. It wasn’t so much the urge to wish her a happy birthday that had come to him in later years, but the overwhelming feel of <em>her</em> around him because he hadn’t associated that mid-August day to anything or anyone else for so long. Memories of Veronica’s 19<sup>th</sup> birthday spent together on the beach had flooded him then, and Logan still saw them after so many years.</p><p>Then her 21<sup>st</sup> birthday, he’d wanted to say hey. Ask if she was drinking in celebration, legally for the first time. But as he was not quite sober and alcohol didn’t seem an appropriate topic of conversation with someone whose alcoholic mother had run away, he had let it go. And also, he had been scared. Absolutely petrified imagining the contempt in her voice if she answered his call.</p><p>And 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 came and went. Holding his phone in his hand, staring at a picture that resembled her less every time. Thumb hovering over the call function. The time it took for him to give up varied every time, but invariably he had to take long minutes to steady himself, his thoughts and his breaths when he shut off his phone to keep temptation at bay for the rest of the day.</p><p>28 had come, and for the first time Logan made a list of pros and cons to call her. For the first time, he hadn’t taken a drink at the end of the day to forget her. For the first time, he wondered if she remembered him. For the first time, he balled up his stupid list and threw his phone across the room. For the first time, he told his therapist everything that had happened as she soothingly told him that it was progress. For the first time, he decided to be mature and pragmatic about it. He’d decided calling her for her 30<sup>th</sup> birthday made sense. He’d decided to skip 29 and keep the painful pondering at bay for an additional year.</p><p>And there he was, before her 29<sup>th</sup> birthday had even come, staring at her name on his phone, studying her lip gloss smirk and 2007 curls.</p><p>It hadn’t <em>only</em> been her birthdays. No, if one of the best arguments to deter himself from calling in August was that she wouldn’t want to hear from him on her birthday of all days, convincing himself to let go on other days of the year was slightly harder. Sometimes he just missed her. Wanted to hear her voice. Saw something that made him think of her. Thought of a joke no one he knew would find funny but her. Even years after last talking to her (or hearing her laugh, or seeing her smile), he had a feeling he still knew what would get her smirking or sniggering or laughing without restrain, letting him see a part of herself she so often covered up, so free in her laughter. Even in environments he navigated that she had never seen (to his knowledge, he’d realize with a pang as it occurred to him that he knew so little about her adult life), he found ways to be reminded of her frequently. And it drove him crazy. He’d almost called her the previous year when he’d seen a teenage couple spinning around while kissing, before he realized that kind of call would definitely be creepy. He’d once snapped a picture of a drawing of Jabba the Hutt holding a coffee cup he had run across in one of his deployments, instinctively wanting to send it to her as a callback to her time working at Java the Hut, and the realization that they hadn’t talked in over half a decade and that such a message would be strange only hit him later. He’d deleted the picture to make sure he wouldn’t be tempted to send it later.</p><p>There had also been the time he was certain he would die as the aircraft carrier his squadron was on had been stuck in an unpredicted storm. As others were frantically calling their wife or their brother, an image of Veronica had flashed into his head, laughing at something he’d said so long ago. Instead, he’d called Dick and cried silently when the others were asleep at night.</p><p>So to say that calling Veronica wasn’t a new idea would have been an understatement. Yet, all the other times, he had never had a good enough reason. They were good enough for him, because <em>hell</em> he wanted to hear her voice, hear the smile in her words and the laugh in her breaths, but they wouldn’t hold up against any kind of scrutiny. They wouldn’t be solid enough to ground his words when she picked up and the grown-up version of her said something.</p><p>This time, he had a reason. He truly needed her, and not in the way he’d slurred repeatedly at nineteen, badly shaven in his room at the Grand. If she picked up, he’d have something to say, something to ask. Something to keep him from saying he missed her and making a fool of himself.</p><p>So when he dialed her number, heart hammering in his chest as Dick watched on, rolling his eyes, there was a hope somewhere deep inside him that maybe it would be okay.</p><p>It took her some time to pick up, and the anticipation was building in his chest. Both desperation and longing were growing.</p><p>“So… what’s new with you?”</p><p>His breath caught in his throat. She sounded different, she sounded the same. The tone of her voice told him she knew it was him, she knew what had happened. The tone of her voice was teasing him (kind of), and he knew it had to mean something. So he risked it.</p><p>“I need your help, Veronica.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'd love it if you could tell me what you thought of this! I know virtually nothing happens but I've always been intrigued by Logan's thought patterns and what goes on in that head of his... hopefully it was interesting to someone else too!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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